Plot
Characters The Plot The big problem: dragons are not seen as equals, and face horrible rights abuses as a result of that. Goal: dragons recognized as non-human peoples and given the same rights as humans. Oz's predatory gambling rings regulated to make them non-predatory. At start, dragons who go into debt to Oz ("debtors") cannot get any job other than racing or fighting. At end, this will be changed so debtors cannot gamble, and can get any job to pay off their debt. SET UP Volts is at Dragon and Space Combat Academy, training to become a sniper. Issa is there as well, but instead training as a pilot to Stevius. Both are 18; Volts has been there a little over two years and is almost done with her training. Issa has been there since birth. They first meet when Volts is assigned to Issa. Though most dragons have a much larger crew, COG is trying out new stealth tactics with Issa and Stevius, so they're a crew of only two. They get along okay, not clicking perfectly but not hating each other. Volts gets along much better with Stevius, who is delighted to talk to someone who likes weapons as much as he does. They are in the middle of a cold war between Coalition For Good and Oz's Candyshop Inc. Oz created the first dragon racing rings on Earth, where she got rich enough to move them to other planets once COG banned them. She takes advantage of dragons' natural gambling addiction to make herself very rich. COG creates dragon clones and breeds dragons at their will, refusing to recognize the dragons' sovereignty as non-human people. There is a war brewing over those two issues, and everyone is picking sides. No major fights have broken out yet, mostly petty border skirmishes and arrests. COG can't touch Oz, and Oz can't touch Earth. The Event Then there's THE EVENT. The largest DRASC Academy, the one out in Texas, is ''glassed, ''which means burned to the ground by fire so hot it melts everything to glass. Hundreds, possibly thousands of lives are lost. The perpetrators are three Titanic Dragons, so large that their wings block out the sun, and the city is lit only by their dragon fire. Once the compound, which covers several square miles, is entirely melted, the dragons smash the symbol for Oz's Candyshop Inc into the ground, and fly away. It is seen as the most horrific act of terrorism the system has ever seen, and COG condemns Oz for such a brutal action. Nobody knows it was a false-flag event, carried out by COG operatives and not Oz. That becomes relevant much later. Anyways, THE EVENT throws DRASC into overdrive. All of the students there are pushed harder than they ever were before, because COG is finally ready to go to war. This also interrupts COG's plans to make a stealth unit of any sort, and Volts and Issa are thrown into normal classes to learn normal war stuff as fast as they can before they're deployed. Plot Lines A plot: COG vs Oz B plot: COG vs the dragon revolution C plot: Volts trying to fix Issa Volts and Issa go off to defeat Oz and stop her from preying on dragons. They succeed. Then Issa's unit takes over her brain, and forces her to return to earth and start the dragon rebellion. Volts is traumatized by the "loss" of her friend but goes to help. Eventually the dragon rebellion get horribly out of hand, to the point where the dragons are marauding and flagrantly killing humans, with Issa (controlled by Stevius) at their lead. Volts has tried reasoning with Stevius, with Issa, to no avail. Overtime Issa and Stevius' personalities meld to become one, to the point where there is no difference between them. They go by Stevissa. They are the figurehead of the rebellion, saying they represent a blended future for both humans and dragons. But they just destroy. Like everything. Full scale alien invasion. Volts slowly realizes what she has to do, the only thing she can do. She has to pick a side; human or dragon. And she chooses human; she chooses to save her parents and her friends and her home. So Volts kills Issa, and flees back to the DRASC university she grew up in. The rebellion starts to lose, badly, and all of the rebel dragons are either slaughtered or driven off. COG regains control of earth, and the sruviving loyalists face even more severe sanctions and regulations than ever before. Volts' last action is to board a ship headed for Saturn, promising to never look back to earth.